Since the first Amplify event (formerly known as Poverty Is Real) in 2011, Amplify has helped to raise more than $150,000 for DCM. Each year, Lenz has served as the presenting sponsor. Amplify was founded by Lenz partner and Vice President of Marketing Mike Killeen, who remains an Amplify board member. Christine Mahin, Lenz Marketing’s Accounts Supervisor, who helped plan and produce the inaugural Amplify Decatur Music Festival in 2016, served as festival director this year. Lenz President and CEO Richard J. Lenz serves as the Chair of the Amplify Advisory Board. And the entire Lenz team contributed to the marketing and production of the event.

On April 22, thousands gathered on the Downtown Decatur Square for the Amplify Decatur Musical Festival, the centerpiece of the concert series. Americana legend and three-time Grammy winner Lucinda Williams headlined the outdoor festival, which drew more than 2,000 guests. Also performing were Noah Gundersen, John Moreland, Harold Holloway & Company, Packway Handle Band, and Kristen Englenz & The Committed.

“Anyone who attended the event will recognize how special this community is, as hundreds of volunteers, sponsors, restaurants, beer vendors, citizens, city officials, police force, and artists came together to create a magical night,” said Richard Lenz. “It takes a village to put on a great event like we experienced, and I can’t thank them enough. I was lucky enough to spend time with Lucinda and she said she was impressed with the event and audience, which meant a lot.”

Amplify Decatur also featured a four-night stand at historic Eddie’s Attic, featuring Caroline Herring, Leopold & His Fiction, Scott Miller, Bob Sima, and Angie Keilhauer. On April 30, it culminated with the Bob Dylan vs. The Band cover night featuring seven local and regional acts.

Lenz Marketing recently planned and executed an Atlanta-wide billboard campaign for Resurgens Orthopaedics consisting of six billboards strategically placed in and around the perimeter. The year-long campaign included rotating seasonal artwork displaying aspirational copy lines and images that speak to the practice’s Reach for More campaign. The boards can be found throughout the city including on I-85, I-75S, I-75N, I-285E, and on the Turner Field connector.

Lucinda Williams recently told Rolling Stone magazine of an early meeting with a Columbia Records executive. “He said, ‘You have a lot of potential, but you need to work on your songs. None of them have bridges.’ After the meeting, I got out my Bob Dylan and Neil Young albums. I said, ‘These songs don’t have bridges either. So f*#@ that guy.’”

Williams has always recognized the signal from the noise That’s one reason she’s earned unbridled adulation from fans and artists alike for more than 30 years.

Many were introduced to Lucinda Williams via Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, the 1998 album that earned a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album and universal praise from music critics the worldwide (Car Wheels landed at number 305 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 best albums of all time).

But by then, those in the know already recognized Williams as one her generation’s most vital artists and a leader of the “alt-country” movement she helped create, thanks to her eponymous 1988 breakthrough album and 1992’s Sweet Old World. By the time Essence was released in 2001, Time magazine also had Williams in its sites, calling her “America’s best songwriter” the following year.

Part of Williams’s appeal is how she seamlessly blends the honored traditions of folk, country, and blues while introducing a sensibility that feels entirely her own. Perhaps this can be traced to her upbringing. Her father was Miller Williams, a literature professor and poet who read his poem “Of History and Hope” – containing the line “We know the sound of all the sounds we brought” – at Bill Clinton’s 1997 inauguration. Lucinda Williams followed her dad’s teaching job across the Southeast, including to Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Georgia. Later, under her own volition, she settled first in New Orleans, then Austin, then New York City, and finally Los Angeles, where her passion for music became a formal pursuit.

Today, Williams says she is writing and singing better than she ever has, and it’s hard to argue. She is surely more prolific. Once known for her measured perfectionism (it took 11 years for her to release the consecutive albums, Lucinda Williams, Sweet Old World, and Car Wheels on a Gravel Road), Williams’s most recent release, Ghosts of Highway 20, represented her second double album in a span of just 18 months, following 2014’s Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone. Both belong to Williams’s newly formed record label, Highway 20 Records, perhaps offering a bit of symmetry for an artist who has always been truly independent.

Lucinda Williams headlines the 2017 Amplify Decatur Music Festival on Saturday, April 22. Lucinda and her band will go on around 9:15 p.m. Visit AmplifyDecatur.org for tickets and more information.

Superheroes are often depicted wearing capes and flying around bustling cities in their bright and extravagant costumes. Jordan Rose and Meisa Salaita may not look the part, but they have become superheroes in their own important way by celebrating and promoting Atlanta’s thriving scientific community.

Jordan and Meisa are the co-founders and co-directors of the Atlanta Science Festival, a riveting 11-day celebration (March 15-25) of local science and technology right here in Atlanta, Georgia. The festival is designed to bring people together around a shared love for science through 100 individual and creative events. With experiences such as cooking and eating bugs, discovering the science behind brew-making, walking through Atlanta’s forests to witness the local wildlife, and stopping the zombie outbreak, it’s no wonder that the festival has seen remarkable success in a few short years. There is something for everyone, and no one will walk away from the festival disappointed at its offerings.

Behind it all are Jordan and Meisa.

Meisa Salaita holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from Northwestern University, and is no stranger to working within scientific culture. Prior to co-founding the festival, she worked with two different National Science Foundation Centers for Chemical Innovation. She originally came up with the idea of the Atlanta Science Festival when she heard about similar festivals happening in Europe. After that, she decided that Atlanta needed to have one too. Thanks to Meisa’s passion and determination, the Atlanta Science Festival has grown from a collaboration between the Metro Atlanta Chamber, Georgia Tech, and Emory to a can’t-miss Atlanta event for the scientific and non-scientific communities alike.

When asked why the festival means so much to her, Meisa spoke about her passion for spreading the love of science: “It’s really important to make science a part of culture and to showcase how science is interesting, fun, not scary, and important! By having events that connect science to everyday life and to things that people are already interested in outside of science, we are able to achieve that.”

The co-architect of the festival is Jordan Rose. After receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in neuroscience and behavioral biology as well as his Master of Public Health degree in prevention science from Emory, Jordan has gone on to hold multiple scientific roles. From working as the Associate Director of the Center for Science Education at Emory to becoming the Executive Director of the Georgia BioEd Institute, Jordan’s love for science has followed him everywhere he has gone.

Jordan’s passion for the festival is evident when speaking to him. He believes that, for a lot of people, science leaves a bad taste in their mouth, perhaps because of a negative experience in their education. To Jordan, the festival is a way to bring those people back into the fold and break down the stereotypes that exist over scientists and science alike. To Jordan, it all boils down to one idea, “We’re trying to show people that scientists are people too.”

Lenz is proud to present the 2017 Amplify Decatur Music Festival—to be held outdoors on the Decatur square on Saturday, April 22. The event is produced in partnership with Eddie’s Attic and will feature three-time Grammy Award winner, Lucinda Williams and her band.

Additional acts include Noah Gundersen, John Moreland, Harold Holloway and Co., Packway Handle Band, and Kristen Englenz. Every dollar raised will be directed to Decatur Cooperative Ministry to support their efforts to prevent and alleviate homelessness in and around Decatur and DeKalb County. Last year’s event raised $30,000 for DCM.

https://www.lenzmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/logo-1.png00Lenzhttps://www.lenzmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/logo-1.pngLenz2017-03-17 14:19:452017-07-18 17:41:30Lenz is proud to present the 2017 Amplify Decatur Music Festival on April 22, 2017

VP of Marketing Mike Killeen recently spoke to a healthcare marketing class at Valdosta State University. Here are the notes from Mike’s presentation.

1. Marketing healthcare is noble work

It connects doctors and patients who need them

Marketing often gets a bad rap. For some, it is the dark side of business, purely focused on making the cash register ring. But the purpose of marketing is to connect people with products and services they desire.

In turn, healthcare marketing exists to connect patients with healthcare providers and services that can help them stay healthy, get well, and live better lives.

Sure, marketing has been used to sell cigarettes to children. That’s bad. But more often it helps patients in need find a doctor that can care for them. That’s good.

2. Patients are people, too

They drink Coke and vote in elections

Effective healthcare marketing has more in common with consumer product marketing than most people realize. Why? Because patients are people, not some foreign species that exists only to receive medical treatment.

In other words, we’re all consumers, making choices everyday about what soda to drink, which political candidate to vote for, and where to take our sick kids for care.

Consumers arrive at buying decisions for different products in similar ways. They want value. They want to make choices with confidence. And, most of all, they want to associate with brands, organizations, and products that reinforce their views of themselves.

That’s true whether they are choosing a doctor or a can of sugar water.

3. Healthcare is jazz

Overnight shipping is the symphony

Patients may not be a foreign species, but doctors and healthcare executives often are!

That’s a joke of course, but the point is that the most singular aspect of healthcare marketing isn’t the patient audience, but working within the healthcare ecosystem, which presents a set of dynamics very different from other industries.

The healthcare industry is a constellation of loosely associated components striving to move together in a positive direction – kind of like a jazz band. Hospitals, physician practices, government, private insurance groups, pharmaceutical companies, and non-profit organizations all play a role. Sometimes they are well coordinated, and sometimes they are not. Overnight shipping, on the other hand, is more like the symphony: a well “orchestrated” set of activities arranged with a single goal in mind.

Today, the healthcare industry is experiencing a rapid transformation toward consumerism, where patients make independent choices about their care team instead of relying entirely on physician referrals. Most senior physicians and leadership entered the industry and built successful practices before the rise of the Internet and healthcare reform helped create this new reality.

So, understanding how patients make decisions is the easier part. Understanding how to effectively communicate the value of direct-to-patient marketing to a healthcare organization’s leadership requires a deeper understanding of the industry.

4. Nobody cares until they do

Then it’s all that matters

There is a segment of the population that is always in the market for a new guitar. If they had the money, the space, and their spouse’s approval, they would buy a guitar every day. But on a given day, relatively few people have an interest in or need for an orthopedic surgeon. Their backs, knees, and shoulders feel great. So, they probably wouldn’t even notice a TV commercial for an orthopedic group. But an ad about a holiday special at Guitar Center? That gets their hearts pounding every time.

There’s an old healthcare marketing joke about the guy who injures his knee and turns on the radio, waiting to hear the first ad for an orthopedic surgeon, so he knows where to go for help. The point is that that’s not how it works. By the time you injure your knee, the well marketed practice has probably already won your business, even if you didn’t consciously notice their TV ads until you were hurt.

Healthcare is a service that most people don’t think or care about until they need it. Once they do, it’s all that matters to them, and then they want to act fast. The lesson is that healthcare marketing requires branding—establishing a preference in the mind of the consumer before they have a need—and patience until the need arises. It’s an investment, but one that pays off.

5. All doctors are experts

And everybody cares

If you are a physician in America, there is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the public recognizes you as an expert. The bad news is that they think the same of your colleagues and competition.

The message is that clinical expertise is rarely a differentiator. Word of mouth based on bedside manner and even wait times are more likely to separate a physician from the pack—as is an association with well-esteemed and well-branded institution.

Marketing works best when there is an appropriate balance between functional and emotional appeals. But the classic healthcare marketing mistake is saying, “we are experts” (functional appeal) and “we care” (emotional appeal).

Expertise and compassionate medicine are examples of the “price of entry” concept—where what is most important to the consumer is also expected by them, and therefore does not differentiate one product from another. A healthcare provider promoting expertise and compassion will be about as effective as a restaurant promoting its clean kitchen, or an airline promoting safety. In either case a stronger position, or differentiator, is required for success.

6. Big data is coming

But will patients accept it?

In some ways healthcare marketing is the ultimate branding platform. Historically, very little data has been published about patient outcomes, and treatment expenses are largely hidden from view.

So, what do patients compare? Their perceptions and the reputations of the healthcare providers they consider. In other words: their brands.

This may be changing. Soon, we will see more healthcare data than ever before. Healthcare reform and the advent of Accountable Care Organizations are tying payment models to patient outcomes. Medicare has begun releasing physician-payment records annually, providing public access to how billions of dollars are spent on healthcare each year. And high deductible insurance plans are helping accelerate the retail medicine movement.
Together, these changes further contribute to an increasingly consumer healthcare environment where patients will have the opportunity to consider the more functional components (like treatment results and pricing) rather than relying on physician referrals and quality perceptions when making healthcare decisions.

The questions are whether, and how fast, patients will embrace the opportunity.

7. Dear Doctor: It’s not about you

Tell your patients’ stories, not yours

For whatever reason, doctors really like promoting their backgrounds: the schools they attended (all four of them), their certifications, prior hospital leadership positions, the conferences they attended, and the papers they’ve published.

But their audience—the ones who make or break their businesses—are patients who want to hear about the things that affect them: the treatments they have to choose from, what they’ll experience on their first office visit, and whether their insurance is accepted.

If they do care to hear about their doctor, it’s not where they went for residency, but why they entered medicine, what they are passionate about, and which former patient had the greatest impact on their life – all things that will help discerning patients understand what they can expect from their doctor.

Mark your calendars! The 2017 Atlanta Science Festival will be held March 14 – 25 and will feature over 100 events plus one big party (the Exploration Expo) across locations throughout the city of Atlanta. Lenz is proud to be the marketing agency and a sponsor for the festival, providing marketing, graphic design, and social media services to promote this annual celebration of technology and science.

Lenz recently developed a festival insert in the March 2017 edition of Atlanta magazine, featuring the new astronaut mascot, a schedule of events, event details, and other important festival information.

The Atlanta Science Festival welcomes people of all ages to explore the science and technology in Atlanta and to see how science is connected to all parts of their lives. Scientists and educators from museums, local schools, universities, and companies will uncover mysteries and explain discoveries in a variety of hands-on activities, facility tours, stimulating presentations, and riveting performances to expand the community of science enthusiasts and inspire a new generation of curious thinkers. Over the course of the festival, 100+ activities and events will be held that are suited for young children to adults. To close off the celebration, the Atlanta Science Festival will host the Exploration Expo in Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta’s biggest interactive science event that is free and open to the public.

https://www.lenzmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/logo-1.png00Lenzhttps://www.lenzmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/logo-1.pngLenz2017-03-02 14:07:072017-03-02 14:07:07Lenz is proud to support the Atlanta Science Festival

Lenz is proud to be co-sponsoring a Classical Brunch at City Winery on Sunday, December 4th from noon to 3 PM.

Attendees of the brunch will be treated to a full classical show hosted by radio personality Lois Reitzes. In addition to hosting several WABE 90.1 programs, Lois produces and hosts WABE’s Atlanta Symphony Orchestra broadcasts.

The show will feature the musical talents of Indra Thomas and Okorie Johnson Trio. The American soprano Indra Thomas made her professional debut as soprano soloist in Verdi’s Requiem with the New York Choral Society in Carnegie Hall and has been acclaimed to be the next great Verdi soprano. Okorie Johnson is an Atlanta based cellist and composer who uses high quality amplification, looping technology, and sound processing to create songs that utilize both jazz and classical music.

When you work in a particular field, it shapes your worldview. Many times, I catch myself examining culture, business, and interpersonal relationships as the inevitable products and outcomes of communications, which is the essence of marketing. Kind of like, “Communications is Everything, and Everything is Communications.”

My usual elevator speech, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, is this: We use the evil tools and methods of advertising, communications, and marketing persuasion to advance the causes, people, organizations, and corporations that we believe are making a positive difference in the world. Through Lenz, we are trying to make a difference.

Lenz has viewed “Events” as communications and marketing as well, and has used events to advance our clients’ businesses in many ways.

This weekend, starting Friday night, is the AJC Decatur Book Festival, which has turned into, ahem, a Bookzilla of a book festival. Lenz’s efforts on the Festival started in 2005, when Daren Wang walked into my office and asked if we would be interested in helping to launch the book festival that the South needed.

As an author, editor, designer, and publisher of books, I told him, This is your lucky day!, and we jumped in with both feet. The festival has grown by leaps and bounds, and today requires my entire staff’s effort to support the event in the PR, Digital, Design, Social Media, Advertising, and Promotions areas.

In Decatur, Lenz has also been proud to support, in a variety of ways, the Arts Festival, Wine Festival, and Beer Festival, led by the city and an army of local volunteers and art, wine, and beer aficionados. Just a few months ago, we helped launch Decatur’s first music festival, Amplify Decatur, which raised funds for Decatur Cooperative Ministry. I believe these events have gone a long way in positively marketing Decatur, which was recently listed first as one of the “Coolest Suburbs in America” on Thrillist.

After the Book Festival tents come down, I know the event I am most looking forward to, and that is the Atlanta Science Festival. Lenz will be working with the festival to help this great idea reach even more people and make a greater impact. Our interest and work on scientific and natural topics goes back to Lenz’s very beginnings, helping to market the Tennessee Aquarium, The U.S. Space and Rocket Center, The Junior Ranger Program, Project Wet, The Schoolyard Habitat Program, and editing and publishing 19 books on America’s greatest natural areas.

If I don’t see you at the Book Festival, I hope I will at the Atlanta Science Festival March 15-25, 2017!

The phrase is widely associated with Bill Gates in a blog he wrote nearly 20 years ago. Today, his messages seem prophetic, among them: “Content is where I expect most of the real money will be made on the Internet…” (see Netflix) and “No company is too small to participate” (see the millions of small businesses with a WordPress blog).

“Content” is shorthand for the engaging parts of your web presence—the blogs, photos, and videos, for example—that intend to connect with audiences rather than convert, or sell. And while some think of content purely through the prism of search engine optimization, a proper content strategy holistically considers the entirety of the user experience (another cliché) from the search query through the on-site conversion. In other words, getting people to your site is the first step, but they also need to find what they’re looking for, have a fulfilling visit, and eventually buy something from you.

This brings me to Lenz. When I joined the company way back in 2002, I was fresh out of UGA’s journalism school with visions of Woodward and Bernstein dancing in my head. Lenz hired me to write news and feature articles that would appear strictly on our clients’ web sites. When my friends would ask about my new job, I would say, “I write web releases, they’re kind of like press releases, but not important enough to send to the press.” Today I and the rest of the marketing world understand the value of blogging, while Lenz understood it from the beginning.

Ask a Lenzer how we market healthcare and she’ll tell you, “just like we market everything else.” Patients are people, we like to say. Lenz recognizes that healthcare is a unique industry and healthcare marketing, a specialized field. However, this does not mean you push the best marketing practices aside every time you work in a new industry. For patients, choosing a doctor—like choosing a soda, brand of sneakers, or presidential candidate—is a buying decision, and many commonalities apply.

According to the Pew Research Center, 72 percent of Internet users looked online for health information within the past year. And 77 percent of online health seekers start with a search engine—as opposed to going directly to a healthcare provider’s web site or an online review site.

Translation: Healthcare is a consumer industry and the web largely determines the winners and losers. And what comprises a winning website? Informative, entertaining, and insightful content that people want to read, view, share, and comment on.

When it comes to healthcare, the website’s job is to introduce the hospital or practice and its providers, demonstrate their qualifications and compassion, and establish trust—the holy grail in healthcare marketing—all before the doctor actually meets the prospective patient.

Research shows, time and again, that patients want to build relationships with their doctors. Lenz’s independent research has shown that patients care very little about their physicians’ training, board certifications, or leadership positions at the hospital. So, a great CV won’t cut it.

If you’re a physician eager to grow your practice, consider instead a blog retelling the moment you knew you wanted to enter medicine, share your favorite letter from a patient or a photo from your last mission trip, or produce a video that helps family members understand their role in your patients’ care journey. These are great ways to build the trust that your success depends on.

https://www.lenzmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Healthcare-content-strategy.jpg8001200Lenzhttps://www.lenzmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/logo-1.pngLenz2015-11-19 14:52:032015-11-19 14:52:03Content is King in Healthcare, Too.